Gallup Polls discovers that a plurality (45%) of Americans still think the national media is too liberal rather than too conservative (18%). Republicans overwhelmingly (77%) feel this way, but so do a plurality (43%) of independents. Even more bizarre, a majority (58%) of Democrats think the media’s partisan balance is just about right.
The right has been railing about liberal bias in the media for forty years and it has clearly had an enduring effect on public perceptions. But the l’affair Lewinsky, the Bush Era, and the rise of the Blogosphere have exposed example after example of conservative bias. This has been captured in the Gallup poll…but barely.
The tendency on the part of Americans to perceive the news media as too liberal has been observed in each Gallup survey in which this question has been asked since 2001. Still, if there is a perceptible trend, it is the finding that the “too conservative” number has been climbing slightly throughout the decade — from 11% in 2001 to 19% and 18% over the last two years.
I suppose a near doubling in accurate perception is significant progress, but it is still depressing to see these numbers. There has been a major paradigm shift, at least for careful observers. In 2000, Joe Lieberman was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate…now he is an outcast. In 2000, columnists like Tom Friedman, Maureen Down, Joe Klein, David Broder, and Richard Cohen were perceived as left-leaning. Now they are considered laughing stocks and right-wing war apologists. Or, in Dowd’s case, as just ridiculous and irrelevant. In 2000, the Washington Post editorial board was lazily considered left-wing. Now they are considered as hapless warmongering lazy propagandists for a failed war and a failed presidency.
Perhaps the only truism in national media that has gone untouched is that the New York Times editorial board, led by Gail Collins, has remained solidly left-leaning in their outlook. But their print reporting has taken a beating with the fake news of Jayson Blair and the wardrumming of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller.
The Washington Post’s print reporting has been better, but in part that is because their worst reporters left to start The Politico, which is one of the more embarrassing and transparently right-wing rags to ever grace our Capitol.
The media consistently rolled over on war coverage. Too many of them took Scooter Libby’s side in the case of Valerie Plame Wilson. Everywhere we look (outside of Knight-Ridder/McClatchey) we see the fallout of a press that exhibited startling conservative bias.
And, another thing has come to light. Seeing how true conservatism works in action, we might ask ourselves if there is any such thing as conservative journalism? Is Jeff Gannon a journalist? Is William Safire? Charles Krauthammer? Michael Ledeen? Or are they just somewhat camouflaged flacks? What does the truth mean to these people?
What does it mean to David Broder or Joe Klein, for that matter?
To see the truth put on a pedestal you need to read the analysis of the blogosphere. You need that filter because the honesty comes through in the format of instant feedback and instant fact-checking. A dishonest blogger will have no audience, while a dishonest columnist will have a studio chair to amplify his or her lies all across the airwaves.
And, while it might be tempting to believe that the press has not so much been conservatively biased as they have been deferential to an administration at war, the whole experience of the Clinton years (Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, Lewinsky) gives the lie to that analysis. The media, including especially the New York Times, went after Clinton like bulldogs. Bush? They’ve barely laid a finger on him.
Did I just write this whole piece without once mentioning Fox News?